Haunting of the South Passage
by Ellie12
Summary: There's a ghostly noise late at night in the south passage. It's up to Leia and Han to find out the cause. A little light and silly, and vaguely inspired by Nancy Drew type mysteries. For the October 2019 HanLeia Challenge prompt "haunting."


"...that's probably all it is, kid."

"No," she heard Luke insist as she approached their table in the dining hall, "I know what _that_ sounds like, and it wasn't—Leia!"

"Luke. Han." She nodded, holding her tablet in front of her, excuse for approach ready.

"Help us settle something. I think the south passage is haunted."

"Haunted?" Her eyebrow raised of its own accord, and she spared a quick look at Han, who rolled his eyes, clearly already done with the discussion.

"Yeah. I was reporting back in from patrol last night after midnight, and there was this awful racket coming from behind the wall."

"A racket?" This whole base was full of weird noises as equipment dealt poorly with the conditions; she was almost afraid to ask, to see what might be failing them now. The air compressors tended to make a horrible clanging before they froze up entirely-perhaps she needed to put someone on that. Almost before he could respond, she was tapping through options on her datapad.

"Like a loud wailing noise. Or someone crying."

She furrowed her brow, trying to think of what equipment along the south passage might fail with such a spectacular sound. The air compressors got clangy, the water recyclers gurgled, the servers controlling the geolocation system-"Oh, it could be the geoservers? They can make a whining noise when they get too cold and are about to go down."

"It wasn't a whine though it was more like...aaaaaAAAAAAaaahhhHHHH." Luke's wail attracted the attention of most of the dining hall, though he didn't seem phased by it.

Rather, he looked around at the curious and puzzled looks he'd drawn and asked, "Anyone else heard that in the south passage?"

Han covered his smirk with his hand. Leia glanced around the room, noting a few snickers from others. One intrepid pilot, in a Green Squadron uniform, called out, "You get Eccson alone down there, Luke?" The snickers turned into outright laughter in a few cases, as Luke blushed and looked back down at his tray.

"I told ya, kid," Han drawled, "Much more likely someone's making use of the supply room down there."

"Oh?" Leia directed her raised brow at him. He had an entire ship of his own, surely he wasn't making use of the supply rooms for his dalliances.

He cleared his throat. "I was uh, _borrowing_ some conduit patching. Happened to walk in on Weyes over there, along with Eccson. Wouldn't say he was wailing, though, so much as-"

"I think we get the general idea, thank you, Han." She hurriedly raised her datapad and waved it at the two of them. "Now if you're done speculating about ghosts, perhaps I could interest you in some actual work?"

Two nights later, Leia was walking back to her quarters from a late shift in the Command Center. Later than even was usual for her, and the low blue night-lighting of the icy passageways made them look quite otherworldly. The ice here had mineral deposits that made it melt at a higher temperature than normal water ice, but it also made it refract light oddly. It had made building the base a struggle, as they worked to find lighting that wouldn't cause visual disruptions for most beings.

Halfway down the south passage, she heard something, and stopped. It was faint, and reminded her vaguely of the noise of shifting glaciers, which she had heard in the mountains of Alderaan. But the sound built in intensity, to the point that she took shelter in a doorway, certain the whole passage was going to come crashing down around her. It didn't sound quite like the wailing Luke had described, but surely others had noticed this, if was occuring with any regularity.

Unless...she made her way down to the entry to the supply room. The noise had faded, but was still echoing down the hallway. Putting her ear near the door, there was no appreciable difference in noise levels. She knocked, fairly loudly, twice. The only sound was the once-again-building pitch of noise.

She took a deep breath, steadying her nerves to find anything imaginable behind the supply room door, and keyed it open. The interior was dark and silent; when she waved her hand inside to trigger the lighting, all she saw were racks and racks of crates and cables and neatly cataloged supplies. Knowing it took five minutes of stillness for the lighting to cycle itself off, she was fairly sure that the noise hadn't been caused by anyone in this room. That disappointed her, because she'd frankly shared Han's assessment of the likely source of what Luke had heard.

But now, having heard the odd sound for herself, she was less sure. To her, it sounded more like something she wanted to set the engineering team onto straight away, because collapse of the passageway seemed more likely than a haunting or incautious lovers.

Closing the supply room door behind her, she was already composing a message to the head structural engineer about her concerns for the safety of everyone on base. It was ready to send by the time she returned to her quarters. She read it over once more before sending, making sure the tone was one of concern and not blame, and sent it off before going to sleep.

The next day, there was general grumbling around the base as the south passage was closed for structural assessment. Everyone was forced to reroute around the base, an obnoxious enough problem that there was already grumbling about it by breakfast, as those on early shifts had been witness to the engineering team setting up.

"Do you know what's going on down there, Leia?" Luke looked up at her eagerly over a glass of blue milk.

She sighed as she set her tray down on the table across from him. "Not the specifics. But after I heard something down there last night, I sent Colonel Radue a message about it. I was worried about the structural integrity of the passageway."

"Structural integrity, huh? You didn't wanna check the store room first?" Han smirked over a cup of kaffe.

As she raised her own cup, she met his look. "I did, as a matter of fact. All clear. Though it didn't sound like any noise I've heard a living being make, it sounded more like glacial movement, which is why I...what?

"You real experienced in the noises beings make, Your Worshipfulness?"

"I do speak eight languages and spent enough time in the Senate to be familiar with the communications of-"

He was laughing, and Luke was looking confusedly between the two of them.

She drew herself up to her full height, glaring at him. "I'm quite familiar with glacial noise, which is why I messaged the engineering team. The last thing we need is a passageway collapse. Especially the south passage, which is heavily traveled."

"Unless it's ghosts."

Leia and Han both turned to stare at Luke.

"It ain't ghosts."

"Ghosts aren't real."

Both spoke simultaneously, sharing a glance as they finished, before rounding their gazes on Luke again.

"Why are you so sure it's a ghost, Luke?" Leia queried gently. Few cultures still held beliefs like that, though many still believed in spirits in an abstract, holy sense.

"Aunt Beru used to say there were ghosts out in the canyonlands. That they sounded just like the noise I heard." He flushed and shrugged, looking down at his breakfast.

The table was silent for a few minutes as they all ate. Then Leia's comm beeped. She took one glance at it and began cleaning up her tray. "I'll let you know what the engineers find, all right?"

She could practically hear Han rolling his eyes as she hurried out of the mess.

The structural engineering team had found nothing of note in their thorough inspection of the south passage-much to the base's annoyance, after four days of closure. Radue had muttered something about squealing pipes and overreactions, and shrugged at further questioning. Leia hadn't quite believed that, and knew that it had to be more than loud plumbing, but she wasn't an engineer, and the base leadership seemed to take his word on it.

A week after the engineering report was presented, she was sitting in the mess, having a rather quiet breakfast with Luke. He'd just gotten off patrol, and was trying to warm up with some porridge and tea before heading to bed, and she was trying to simultaneously thaw and wake herself with some porridge and kaffe.

That peace was interrupted when a chair across from her squealed across the floor and the lanky form of Han Solo dropped into it.

Without so much as a hello, he began, "So I think maybe you're right about the south passage, kid."

"Really?" Luke suddenly looked much brighter and closer to fully awake. Leia just rolled her eyes.

"Yeah. Got back in from the run to Sullust late last night. Coming back from checking in, heard the same thing you did as I went down the south passage. Definitely wasn't what I thought it was."

Leia couldn't help her snort, though she tried to muffle it into her mug. "Engineering cleared the south passage the day after you left. There's nothing going on there."

"But we've all heard it now!" protested Luke. "There's got to be something."

She just sighed and took another long sip of kaffe. But Han appeared to be pondering, as he reached across the table and stole the comice fruit off Luke's tray and took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, head canted just slightly, then waved the red fruit at both of them.

"We could spend the night down there tonight. See if we can figure it out."

Luke frowned and looked a bit wistfully at the fruit in Han's hand. "I can't. I've got three more nights of overnight patrol I can't just skiv off."

"What about you, Your Highness? You've heard it too, and you have access to all the areas along there that we'd need to investigate."

"We?" She raised an eyebrow at him. It was a harebrained idea, she knew, but she was bored with the monotonous routine here on Hoth, and she _knew_ she'd heard something in the south passage. But she wasn't going to make it easy for Han Solo.

He took another bite of the comice and nodded. "Yeah, we. Who knows what it is, it's not safe going alone. And Luke's stuck on patrol, unless you can get that changed."

"I am not altering patrol schedules just to check out ghostly noises."

"So you do think it's a ghost!" Luke enthused.

Shaking her head, she put her palms down firmly on the table. "I did not say it was a ghost. I said the noises were ghostly. And apparently not an engineering issue. But we don't know what they are."

"So we should investigate then. Before some evil spirit wreaks havoc on the base," Han said with a wink.

"You're watching too many holos, Han. But I do think we should investigate to find the source of the sound. Even if it is just the squealing pipes than engineering claims it to be, we could at least know that's a weak point in the plumbing system and put in more insulation."

Han stared at her hard for a moment, his face sabacc-blank. Then he smiled. "Then let's spend the night in the south passage. Tonight."

Carefully, certain there was a trap in this somewhere, she nodded at him. "But we can't just sit in the south passage all night. It's not heated, we'd freeze. I can get us into the store room, which should be warm enough. And I could hear the...noise from in there when I heard it before."

"It's a date then, Your Worship." He gave her one of his goofy, lopsided grins, and rose from the chair, swaggering away through the mess. She shook her head and wondered just what she'd gotten herself into now.

The litany of life choices she'd made up to the moment leading to the south passage supply room door flickered through Leia's mind as she waved her access badge over the reader and entered the room. Somehow, she'd agreed to spending the night in this chilly supply room with Han Solo. So they could listen for eerie noises.

She shook her head, disappointed in herself, as she placed the pile of blankets she'd brought along on top of one of the cleaner storage crates. Han wasn't here yet; they'd agreed not to arrive at the same time so as to not attract any attention. In the meantime, knowing that the noises were unlikely so early-it had been well past midnight when anyone had heard them prior-she took the opportunity to work on inventory and organization of the supplies.

That was, at least ostensibly, what she was doing down here. It made for a plausible excuse in case anyone from Command found her here, and it was desperately in need of doing. Powering up her datapad, she tapped a few buttons to find the correct inventory list for the room, and began reconciling the listed items with the room's contents.

She'd passed at least an hour that way, and was pondering why anyone had squandered credits ordering three dozen heat deflectors, or waste valuable, easy-access storage space for them, when the thermal seal on the door released with a hiss and whooshed open. Han stepped out of the unheated passage and into the somewhat regulated space with a sigh of relief, the door sealing quickly behind him once more.

"Hey, Princess." He crossed the rather large room, easily maneuvering around errant containers, to toss a few more blankets on the pile she'd brought, along with a large thermos, which settled with a heavy metallic clank. "Thought some kaffe might keep us warm and keep us up. Unless you had some better ideas?"

Giving him the expected eye-roll, she closed the crate she'd been inventorying and made her way to his side to open the thermos and take a whiff of the kaffe. "Just kaffe?"

He patted a pocket on his utility parka. "Got that here too, if you want something stronger."

"This is fine, thank you." She poured a cup for each of them, smiling as she handed one to him.

"So what do you really think we're listenin' for?" He settled on the edge of a crate and looked at her skeptically.

"Well, I really thought it was something structural with the ice. We had glacial ice on Alderaan, and I'm familiar with the sound of it giving way. It sounded quite like that. But engineering couldn't find anything." She sipped the warm kaffe, feeling the heat seep through her body. "What do you think it is?"

"I'd've believed that, if they'd found somethin'. But my credit's still on someone using this supply room as a getaway spot. Ain't ghosts, that's for sure."

Facing him squarely, she shook her head. "I checked in here when I heard it. The room was empty."

"You sure about that? Some of these crates are big enough to hide in, or behind."

"The lights are motion activated, and it was dark when I opened the door. They'd have had to be still for five minutes straight for the lights to have cut off."

He grunted noncommittally and took a swig of the kaffe. "Guess we'll see. We setting up camp here?"

Shrugging, Leia toyed with the edge of blanket. "I just put them here so they'd be out of the way. I was working on inventory. You're welcome to help."

Han pulled a face, so she turned away, picking up her datapad again and heading for a stack of crates. So she was surprised when he was right there beside her to take the lid of the crate as she removed it. And he continues to help her, quietly and companionably, as she worked through the inventory of four of the crates.

As he was latching the top back onto the crate of condensers, he froze and cocked his head to the side. "You hear that?"

She didn't have to ask what he meant; it was faint, but it was the same noise she'd heard previously. Immediately saving the information on her datapad, she powered it down and put it on the desk. Meeting Han's eye, they nodded and began a circuit of the perimeter of the room in opposite directions. When she'd gone halfway around and failed to meet him, she turned and saw him pacing back and forth along the wall perpendicular to the door. He paused when she joined him, but both remained silent as they paced along the wall, occasionally pausing as the sound fluctuated or faltered.

Finally, he stopped at nearly the corner and turned to face her. Whispering, he asked, "What's on the other side of this?"

"Nothing," she answered in a whisper that steamed in the cool room.

"Whatta ya mean, nothing? Somethings gotta be there." In his frustration his voice rose to ask most normal levels, though it was muted by the eerie cry.

Pivoting only her heel, she returned to the crate and powered the data pad back up, then tapped through a few screens. She held it out as she returned to his side. "Per the schematic, nothing. There's an access hatch next to the door to this room, and it opens to the outside. I don't remember anything being delivered there, though. I'm not sure it's ever been used."

"Outside ain't nothing. Somethings out there making this noise." He didn't even look at the schematics, just stared at the wall. "You got outside access?"

"It's the middle of the night! We'd freeze to death if we went out there."

They scowled at one another for a long moment, then her face lit up in a smile and his scowl deepened.

"There are monitoring cameras."

"They work outside here?"

She shrugged. "Usually. They frost up a lot, and have frozen when it gets too cold…."

"Which seems like most of the time, here. Half the equipment is always down because of it."

"Well, I can check." She began frantically tapping through a series of applications and access codes on her datapad, frowning. "And if they're not working, I can always have them repaired."

"I'm sure they'll get right on that," he drawled, rolling his eyes.

A few beats later, though, she smiled and waved the datapad at him. "Got it!"

He stepped closer to her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him. She focused on the task at hand, and tapped the screen a few times, enlarging the views.

"There are three cameras. I don't have authorization to reposition them from here, but I think-"

Reaching across, he tapped the center view, enlarging it to fill the screen. "There."

She zoomed it even further, jaw dropping. "Well. It's big and white but it's not a ghost."

"No," he said with a laugh, then frowned. "But what _is_ that?"

The eerie wailing began again in earnest, as they watched the creature on the monitor trying to claw its way through the icy walls into the base. The yowls of frustration and rage were terrifying, even from the seeming safety of the storage room. The both turned to look at the wall separating them from the creature.

"It's a wampa," she said, barely audible over its cries echoing into the room.

"A what?"

"Wampa. No one really knows much about them-they weren't part of any of the existing information on the native beings on this planet, and no one saw evidence of them on recognisance of the planet before we established the base a few weeks before the official relocation, one of the early teams that was out scouting had a run in with one of them…." She trailed off and looked at the wall, protecting them from the monstrous yowls of the creatures outside.

"And?" Han was looking worried, stepping closer to her and glancing down at the monitors, where the wampa was clawing at the ice wall.

"They live in ice caves and appear to be omnivores. And are very aggressive."

"Yeah, apparently. They get some of the advance team members? Why didn't we hear about that?"

"Fortunately they were on a scouting mission, thus armed. It was touch and go with Eman's leg for a while, and quite a few of them had serious wounds that wouldn't have been so dire if we'd already had a fully functioning med center up and running."

"So a blaster'll take it out?" He seemed to be assessing the wampa on the monitor, instinctively reaching for his holster.

"You cannot go out there. It's too cold after dark."

"But all we need to do is open the access door a little, and I can get a shot off."

"Reports were that it took more than one shot."

His eyes widened a bit, but didn't seem fully surprised, and he still thumbed the catch on his blaster.

"We know what it is now. And I can point out specific times on the security footage. There's no immediate threat tonight, just noise."

Looking at the wampa on the monitor, as it now dug its claws into the crevasses in the ice, he was quiet for a few minutes, studying it. "They gonna need someone to head up this operation?"

She studied him for a moment, watching his eyes as they watched the wampa, noted the faint wrinkling at the corner of his eyes and slight downturn at the corners of his mouth. "Probably not. I'll speak to External Security in the morning. They have a couple staffers who have experience with large lifeforms. Unless you want to volunteer?"

On the screen, the wampa tore through a rock with its claws.

"No, don't let me get in the way of experts."

"It's never stopped you before." She may have smirked just a little as she pulled the datapad away and closed out the security camera access.

"Hey now, helping Luke and Wedge with some ship maintenance is-"

"I hardly think those modifications count as _maintenance_."

"Improved functionality, though. Especially in this cold."

"Until the engines blew. You're all lucky someone wasn't killed."

"Piece of shrapnel might've taken out one of those." He waved at the wall, where the wailing was fading, but there was laughter in his voice.

She huffed out something that was as close to a laugh as she was willing to grant him, and began to gather her things. "I'm going to get a good night's sleep somewhere slightly less frozen than this storage room. And tomorrow I'll talk to Tayyab in the morning about the wampa, and let you know what the plan is."

"You know somewhere on this gods forsaken planet that's less than frozen?"

"Didn't you say last week that you kept the Falcon warm enough to hatch Nubian ducklings?"

"Yeah. Til I got a talking to last week from Rieekan about 'excessive power consumption'. Wonder how he found out about that?" He glared at her, but she merely shrugged as she hit the access panel for the door.

"Perhaps he looked at the consumption readings? We do monitor those things, you know, we've got limited resources and a limited budget."

He seemed to hang back as they left the room, eyeing the doorway that they now realized led outside. The haunting, eerie noises from the wampa had faded away, but the silence felt heavy after so much noise.

"Do not go out there tonight. I'll talk to you tomorrow when I know something."

"Sure, Your Exaltedness." His voice echoed down the empty south passage as she headed back to her quarters.

Two days later, she sat in the mess, prodding the congealed lump on her tray and trying not to look at it distastefully. It wouldn't do for one of the leaders to look at the rations askance. Even if she wasn't sure this was food intended for humanoid species. It certainly looked more like something engineered for Mon Calamari, who couldn't even come to Hoth because their circulatory systems froze- Her cold-frazzled train of thought was cut off abruptly as Han placed his tray onto the table with a clatter, and settled easily into the seat across from her.

"Well?" He waved a fork at her, before lowering it to prod at his own congealed slate grey lump.

"Well, what?"

"Well you were gonna talk to Security."

"I did talk to Tayyab that morning. She-"

Leia was interrupted again by the snowsuit-clad form of Luke sitting down next to her, rattling his seat as much as his dinner tray.

"What happened in the south passage?" He looked between the two of them, eyes sparkling.

Han turned to him, pointing the fork for emphasis again. "Turns out it wasn't a ghost. It was a monster."

"Really?" The younger man looked even more fascinated, which Leia hadn't thought possible.

"Not really. We patched in to the security cameras after we realized the noise was coming from outside, and saw a wampa."

Luke's brow furrowed. "What's a wampa?"

"That's exactly what I said."

"It's a vicious, cave-dwelling native specie that we weren't aware of before we started our infrastructure move here. They were previously unknown. But they're what we were hearing in the south passage."

"They make Chewie look like a toddler and have claws bigger than my hand." Han took a bite of the dinner offering and made a sour face.

"Yes, the security footage we pulled up while listening to it outside is apparently the most footage the biologists have of them. They're really disappointed they can't share any information about them without betraying out whereabouts."

"What a pity."

"So that's it? You saw the...wampa and now we're just not worrying about some vicious creature any more?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I was telling Han when you joined us, that I contacted Lieutenant Tayyab the next morning. She reviewed the footage going back several nights, especially from when we could pinpoint the noises from them. Yesterday she sent out a security team, and one of the biologists."

"I offered to go out myself!"

"You're not part of the security team, nor do you have a doctorate in biochemistry," she said dryly, before turning back to Luke. "The noises have lead to another addition to what little we know of wampas. Apparently they cache food for later, presumably because it's so scarce here. There were a few different food caches in the crevasse leading to the south passage supply door. From the footage she showed me of other nights, Dr. Carolus believes that several different wampas have been caching food there, and were getting in squabbles over it. Hence all the caterwauling."

There was still a furrow of confusion on the younger man's brow. "So what are they doing about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing!? Those things were clawing right at the wall. We heard 'em!" Han looked ready to leap up from the table and go take up the issue with Security himself.

"As a general rule, we try to interfere with local flora and fauna as little as possible. And we certainly wouldn't want to restrict any food sources."

"So we're just gonna let 'em dig right through into the base?" He didn't sound much calmer, and she noted the use of 'we' to bring up in a later discussion.

"They aren't trying to dig into the base, just pulling food out of the rock ledges they've stored it on. But obviously that entrance is going to be sealed up, to be used in emergency only."

"And now we know to be aware of those while we're out on patrol."

"I can have a few images and what information we know passed along to the patrol squadrons. Everyone who's going outside the base really should be aware."

Han's brow shot up and he frowned, but he quickly shook his head, and turned to Luke. "So how have those patrols been going? You snowblind yet?"

Later that night, as Leia was traversing the south passage on her way to another long night shift in Command, she noticed a new sign on the door next to the supply room. The delivery access door to the outside crevasse, now bore a subtle sign. She paused and looked at the warning affixed to the sealed doorway, it's access panel deactivated.

'Caution: Wampas' might not mean much to the average Rebel, but it was enough to send a shiver through her that wasn't entirely due to the cold of the passageway. But there were no wails from the outside, so she traced one gloved hand over the edge of the sign, and proceeded on to Command.

When she passed that way much later, the only sounds she heard clearly came from the supply room. She shook her head, sipped her kaffe, and went on with her night.


End file.
